The New American Security Policy - Implications for Arms Control

Kurt Gottfried, Union of Concerned Scientists
Technology for Life, Helsinki, October 26, 2002

American foreign and defense policy has changed quite dramatically since George W. Bush became president. The new policy contrast sharply not only with that of the Clinton administration, but with that of all his predecessors starting with FDR and including his father.

Anyone reading newspapers recognized even before September 11, 2001, that a deep change seemed to be afoot. It became official two months ago when the White House responded to a Congressional mandate and produced a document spelling out its policy The National Security Strategy of the USA, September 2002. The new and striking features in this document are the explicit threat of preemption "America will act against emerging threats before they are fully formed," - and the stress on the option to act without allies or UN authorization - "we will not hesitate to act alone if necessary."

In a severe crisis, any government of any nation has always had the option of preemption if it has credible warning that an attack is imminent, and to act alone under such circumstances. Preemption and acting alone are, in this sense, permitted under international law. I should also mention that during the 1950s the US Air Force in its planning for the contingency of a Soviet nuclear attack had preemption as a favored option. What is new is that these extreme options are now put forward as options for circumstances in which national survival is not at stake nor when an attack is imminent. During the Cold War pre-emption was only hinted at vaguely by senior officials in the Department of Defense, and meant for the circumstance of an imminent attack on the continental US by the Soviet Union. Now this option advertised loudly and repeatedly for far less dire contingencies.

Two developments have motivated this tenor of the Bush policy.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US became the only power whose military means dwarf those of all its allies and potential adversaries.
September 11 demonstrated that terrorism poses a deadly threat, especially to Americans, and would take on far more catastrophic dimensions were terrorists able to use nuclear or biological weapons against the American homeland.

The unrivaled power of the United States emerged during the first Bush and especially the Clinton administrations. Nevertheless, neither president took this to mean the the US should turn hostile to arms control or to so often disregard the views of close allies. Even the immediate impact of September 11 did not change the mindset of the elder Bush - two days afterwards he stated that 9/11 should "erase the concept that America can somehow go it alone in the fight against terrorism, or anything else for that matter."

Before I focus on US defense policy, a word about American domestic politics.

As is true of most countries, and of all democracies, foreign policy is deeply influenced by domestic politics. One might therefore suppose that these new features in American foreign policy reflect a deep shift of domestic political power. But that is not the case, and let me explain why I say this.

First, recent elections have hardly changed the balance of power. As you know, the presidential election of 2000 was incredibly close. Furthermore, the Democratic and Republican parties have only been able to gain marginal shifts from a 50-50 split in both the House and the Senate.

Second, public opinion polls, by 2/3 majorities, have consistently favored disarming Iraq by UN inspections as compared to overthrowing the Iraqi regime. This is true even though most Americans doubt that UN inspections will succeed in eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

I now turn to American policy regarding nuclear weapons and arms control. I will discuss four topics:

(1) Nuclear weapons (2) The Moscow Treaty (3) Ballistic missile defense (4) Nuclear proliferation

Nuclear weapons

On coming into office, the Bush administration conducted an extensive review of American nuclear weapons policy - a so-called Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). A declassified version was provided to Congress in December 2001; afterwards large portions of the classified (secret) document were leaked to the press - something that had never happened before.

The NPR responds to a Congressional mandate. The last NPR was conducted by the Clinton administration and was originally supposed to produce a really new post Cold War policy. However, the White House and the top civilians in the Pentagon took little interest. As a result what emerged was close to the posture of the the first flush administration. On the whole, President Clinton did not devote enough attention and political capital to exploiting the end of the Cold War to dramatically reduce the nuclear danger.

Another word about nuclear policy under Clinton. The use of nuclear weapons came to be seen as a possible response to an attack with biological weapons - the role of nuclear weapons was enlarged beyond a deterrent against and response to nuclear attack.

The new basic elements in the Bush NPR are:

The intention to retain, into the indefinite future, a large deployed nuclear force, supplemented by a large reserve force - altogether strategic forces of Cold War dimensions.
Unprecedented conflict between the objective of preventing nuclear proliferation, and the nuclear weapons policy itself.
Unprecedented scepticism regarding the practical utility of international law and agreements.
New missions for nuclear weapons of questionable feasibility for both technical and political reasons.
In contrast to the past, missile defense is featured in the NPR. Terrorism appears mainly in the context of missile defense; presumably it played a much larger role.
Greater integration between nuclear and conventional forces

I leave missile defense for later, and briefly elaborate on some other points.

Conflict with non-proliferation goals.

There has always been an irreducible and inherent conflict between being a major nuclear power and stemming proliferation. Nevertheless, this conflict is much more prominent in the Bush nuclear posture. The new NPR calls for:

Keeping a large fraction of the warheads that are to be withdrawn from the deployed force as a "responsive force to augment the deployed force to meet potential contingencies." This will tend to compel Russia to do the same, and will prolong the period during which leakage from the huge Russian nuclear complex is the most likely source of nuclear proliferation.
Developing new nuclear weapons that may require testing, combined with increasing the readiness of the Nevada test site. This does damage to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) above and beyond that done by the Senate's rejection of ratification.

GREATER INTEGRATION OF NUCLEAR AND CONVENTIONAL FORCES. While the NPR does not call for such integration in so many words, it would be an inevitable consequence if nuclear threats are to be available on short notice in crises and conflicts in which the US faces adversaries who are midgets by the standard of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, the US and NATO erected something like firewalls between strategic and tactical nuclear forces, and between conventional and tactical nuclear forces, barriers that the new policy endangers.

NEW MISSIONS:

"Dissuading adversaries from undertaking military programs or operations that could threaten US interests." I would only comment that this did not work against the USSR when the US was the only nuclear power and the Soviets were still in tatters from WW-II. Nor was India able to dissuade Pakistan.
Destruction of "targets able to withstand conventional attack" (e.g., deep underground bunkers or bio-weapons facilities). There has been much talk in the press that lowyield weapons could do this job without producing much fallout or other collateral damage. This is a myth. Large yield warheads are required, as stated explicitly in print by the former Los Alamos Associate Director for Nuclear Weapons. (S.M. Younger, "Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century," LAUR-OO-2850, June 27, 2000)

AVERSION TO INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS. This is reflected in the NPR by the restated opposition to the CTBT, and various measures that are in conflict with the spirit if not the letter of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and with commitments made by Clinton in gaining unlimited extension of the NPT.

THE MOSCOW TREATY

The Bush administration did not want to negotiate a formal treaty with Russia that would constrain US nuclear forces, but insistence by Russia and pressure from Congress and NATO allies finally convinced it to do so. The Moscow Treaty signed in May 2002, has the following features:

requires each Party to have a deployed force that does not exceed 1700 - 2200 strategic warheads by December 31, 2012;
lets "each Party determine for itself the composition and structure of the strategic offensive arms"
is silent on what is to be done with warheads removed from the deployed force, and their delivery systems (missiles, aircraft, submarines);
has no schedule for the reductions;
stays in forces until December 31, 2012;
has no verification or transparency provisions, except those in START which expire in 2009;
can be withdrawn from on three months notice without explanation, in contrast to the SALT, ABM and START treaties which required six months notice and an explanation.

The Moscow Treaty ratifies all the desiderata of the Bush NPR, and more broadly speaking, of the National Security Strategy statement of last month. The only constraint it puts on the US is that its strategic forces are not to be larger than what the NPR had called for beforehand, and even that limit expires in 10 years, or before that on three months notice. When the reductions are to be implemented, how the force is to be structured, and what is to be done with the retired weapons, are all left to the Parties. I should point out that if START had been implemented it held out the promise of reducing the two sides' strategic forces to 2,000 - 2,500 by perhaps as soon as 2007, five years earlier than the Moscow Treaty's deadline of 2012.

The Moscow Treaty is therefore not a sequel to the SALT and START treaties. (It takes up one page, including the preamble and the other formalities.) The Treaty is little more than a fig leaf for Putin visa-vis his domestic critics. It has also given some cover to those in the US and NATO who wanted a treaty that would compel Russia to reduce its strategic forces sharply on a swift schedule; to destroy the retired weapons and delivery systems; and who were willing to have the US do the same in order to achieve these benefits. Given the greatly improved relations between the US and Russia, this outcome could also be achieved without the laborious negotiations and formal agreements of the Cold War, but such a development is not now in sight.

The most troubling feature of the Moscow Treaty is that it allows both Parties to do as they like with the retired warheads. As called for in the NPR, the US will put a couple of thousand strategic and tactical nuclear warheads and delivery systems into a "responsive force," which could be restored to the operational force in a matter of "weeks, months or even years. In addition, the US will keep thousands of intact warheads in an inactive reserve. (For details, see J. Cirincione, Physics & Society, Vol 31, No.3 (2002), p. 14; (American Physical Society))

In making its case for large reserve forces, the administration points to the fact that Russia has a much larger nuclear weapon fabrication capacity than the US because American warheads have a very long lifetime whereas Russian warheads must be replaced in about 10-15 years. (O. Bukharin, Arms Control Today, October 2002; pp.8-12.) This concern could, of course, also be removed by an arms control agreement, whether formal or informal.

Ballistic missile defense

In his election campaign President Bush promised to support an effective ballistic missile defense (BMD) of the United States, and he has kept this promise. A sharp increase in funding was proposed by the administration and approved by Congress. The Pentagon has produced new and ambitious objectives, more flexible directives, and a new organization to run the program.

The objective is to defend the United States, its deployed forces and its allies against ballistic missiles of all ranges. To that end

the defense is to intercept missiles in all phases of their flight - boost, mid-course and terminal
to be fielded as soon as practicable
by 2008 the rudiments of such a defense are to be ready:

boost-phase interception of missiles of all ranges by lasers on aircraft
mid-course interception of ICBMs with the Clinton era ground-based system
a "theater" defense against short and medium-range missiles
terminal defenses of targets in the US itself.

That the plan is much more ambitious than that of Clinton was to be expected. What is surprising is that defenses are "to be fielded as soon as practicable," which is a striking departure from Pentagon practice in the past not just in missile defense but in other military programs.

The process for acquisition of the BMD system will not be governed by a set of definite requirements that the various components of the system are to meet as they pass through various stages from R&D to operational deployment. Instead, the requirements are loosely defined, the acquisition process is to be evolutionary, the focus is to be on rapidly fielding a rudimentary capability, and to then upgrading that capability over time as experience from operational testing accumulates and technology improves.

Military history certainly speaks of many circumstances in which it made good sense to prepare a weak defense to be improved over time, as compared to doing nothing at all until a solid defense was available. It is questionable, however, whether this approach makes sense for BMD which relies on cutting edge technology, and where the consequences of superficially minor flaws can be so catastrophic. For example, the Clinton mid-course system is vulnerable to countermeasures that rely on the absence of atmospheric drag in mid-course, and a detailed analysis (A.M. Sessler et al, Countenneastires, UCS & MIT, April 2000; www.ucsusa.org) shows that it is at best exceedingly difficult to solve this problem. And in the past the Defense Department repeatedly stated that the theater systems would not have a capability against ICBMs; now the assumption seems to be that upgrades will at some point give them such a capability.

The relaxation of requirements and the organizational changes have implications for Congressional oversight and funding. The budget is no longer itemized for individual systems, but is aggregated into the three layers; there is no clear border between readiness for testing and readiness for emergency deployment. Under this procurement process Congress will have much less control over deployment through its budgetary powers than it has had in the past.

Fiscal Year 2001 was the last Clinton budget, and in it missile defense had $ 5.4 B. This rose by 44% to $ 7.7 B in the first Bush year, and appears to be holding at about this level for 2003. Interestingly though, the budget between the various programs is divided in about the same proportions as in Clinton's last budget, as the pie chart shows. In particular, the Clinton era ground-based mid-course system continues to receive the lion's share, rising from 47% to 49%.

What is the technical status of the system today? In brief (For an authoritative overview, see P. Coyle (the Pentagon's director of operational testing during 1994-2001), Arms Control Today, May 2002, pp.3-9.)

Boost Phase. The only system now under development is the Airborne Laser (ABL), a high-power laser mounted on a Boeing 747. This is a very difficult technical undertaking, and has encountered delays and exceeded budget projections. The first shoot-down test is postponed now to 2004, and if there are no further delays production would start in 2010 or later. There are serious questions about the effectiveness of this system: for the aircraft to be on station when needed, lengthy warning of attack is a prerequisite; the aircraft present large targets themselves; and countermeasures such as a reflective coatings on enemy missiles could greatly reduce or annul the effectiveness of this defense,
Mid-Course. This is primarily the Clinton era system, whose vulnerability to countermeasures is now well-known, so I will not go over this again. (Mid-course also includes a navy system that was initially intended for theater defense.)

The principle of hit-to-kill intercept has now been demonstrated, but discrimination between warheads and realistic decoys is a problem whose solution is at best a well-kept secret.
Tests have not been conducted with the rocket that is actually required to carry the interceptor, and its development is two years behind schedule even though the rocket is technically less demanding than the interceptor itself, not to mention warhead-decoy discrimination.

Terminal Defense. Two systems originally conceived for defense of forces in combat theaters are now expected to form the beginnings of terminal defense of the US itself against long-range missiles.

A mobile ground-based hit-to-kill system (THAAD), whose upgrade for defense against missiles of intercontinental range is a decade or more away.
An upgraded version (PAC-3) of the Patriot system. Designed for protection of a limited area from aircraft, cruise missiles and short-range missiles, it remains unclear how this system can be turned into a cost-effective defense of a continent.

Sensors. BMD depends on sensors that can track incoming warheads and decoys, and distinguish between them.

The ground-based X-band (short wavelength) radar has been the most successful and promising part of the program. Construction of such a radar in the Aleutians was to have begun by now, but has been postponed for reasons that are unclear. The plan now appears to be development of shipbased X-band radars.
Two satellite constellations carrying infrared detectors: 6 satellites in high orbits to detect missile launches, to replace the existing early warning satellites; and 30 satellites in low orbits for tracking and discrimination. Both programs are running behind schedule, and the low-orbit system has enormous cost over-runs. Deployment is unlikely to be possible before the end of this decade.

In short, by the end of a second Bush administration in 2008 the most that can be expected is a rudimentary ground-based mid-course system. Its operational effectiveness will, at best, be very limited and uncertain.

Nuclear proliferation

(See M. Bunn, J,P. Holdren and A. Wier, Securing Nuclear Weapons and Materials, Harvard University, May 200 (www.nti.org))

There is a broad consensus, which apparently includes President Bush and his cabinet, that nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists is the gravest and most probable threat facing America (though many see the threat from biological terrorism as being of comparable magnitude). Measures that would greatly reduce the nuclear proliferation threat are relatively simple and very cheap compared to homeland security, which of course also deserves the highest priority. Nevertheless, the administration has devoted far less attention and funding to addressing nuclear proliferation than to homeland security, or for that matter, to missile defense.

The Soviet nuclear weapons complex was so vast that the most likely source of this threat now stems from Russia (All FSU nuclear weapons are in Russia, and so is 99% of the weapons-usable fissile materiel). That the situation is very ominous is well known, but it will do no harm to glance again at the ledger. Russia holds

a stockpile of some 20,000 nuclear warheads, on deployed strategic and tactical weapons, on weapons in reserve, not mounted on delivery systems, etc. Unlike virtually all US weapons, not all weapons of the FSU have devices that prevent unauthorized use.
hundreds of thousands of kg of weapons grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU)
some 20,000 kg of HEU in a scores of research facilities.

The security system for this stockpile was designed for a police state with tightly sealed borders.

A good deal of progress in securing the Russian stockpile has been made by a cooperative program between Russia and the US, funded by Congress. President Bush has also negotiated an agreement with the G-8 that will add another $ 1 B per year for 10 years to this effort. Nevertheless, what has been accomplished is only a beginning:

only 40% of the sites holding weapons-usable materials have had an initial, crude upgrade, which still leaves them very vulnerable by US standards
less than 15% of the HEU stockpile has been rendered unusable for weapons
alternative work for thousands of weapon scientists and engineers remains to be found
only 30,000 kg of HEU is being blended down annually; at this rate it will take over 20 yrs to deal with the whole stockpile.

This last item is the HEU Purchase Agreement, a deal in which 500,000 kg of Russian HEU is to be blended down into fuel for power reactors and sold to the United States. It is expected to have a total value of $10 B, which is to provide Russia with funds for dismantling warheads, disposing of weapons-usable materials and employing the nuclear weapons workforce. Clearly, this program should be accelerated but at this time that is very difficult because the transaction must be economically viable and not glut the market. Security requirements and not market constraints should govern this program, and for this a government subsidy is needed. The sum required is not trivial, but very modest by the standards of the defense budget.

In its first year, the Bush administration tried but failed to cut the budget for these Russian threat reduction programs Congress had agreed to in the last Clinton year. Following 9/11, and for FY-03 the administration has proposed a budget of roughly $ I B, which is a 25% increase above its earlier proposal but still somewhat less than Clinton had proposed for FY-2001, i.e., well before 9/11.

These amounts should be compared with the budget of nearly $ 8 B for missile defense, and well over $ 30 B for homeland security.

Questions

I close by posing some rhetorical questions.

The United States has conventional military forces whose capabilities dwarf those of all plausible and even implausible combinations of adversaries. When the American government announces that it may well find it necessary to resort to nuclear weapons in dealing with fundamentally weak states, does that not tell those who have not yet sought nuclear weapons that they had better get started?
In presenting its Nuclear Posture Review and its case for the Moscow Treaty, the administration argues that the United States will need unconstrained flexibility in structuring its nuclear forces to meet unpredictable threats that might arise in the distant future. By what calculus does the administration arrive at setting a higher priority on remote and unspecified contingencies that 2,000 deployed nuclear warheads cannot deal with, as compared to the existing proliferation threat posed by having Russia maintain an enormous nuclear weapons complex into the indefinite future?
Given the very high priority the administration places on reducing the threat that terrorists may acquire nuclear weapons, how does it justify the modest budget and political focus it has invested in securing the Russian nuclear weapons complex?
Throughout the nuclear age, one rule governed the declaratory nuclear weapons policy of the United States: speak softly and carry a big stick. Why is this rule now obsolete?

These are question that the American body politic will have to answer, but the voices of the citizens and governments of the democracies that have long been friends of the United States will also play an important role in shaping that answer.

Distribution of MD funding

FY01 funding: $5.4 billion (appropriated)	FY02 funding: $7.7 billion (appropriated)